Poetry – Looking Out the Window From My Recliner (A Cento)

Summer brings out the girls in their green dresses;
Sleep, boredom, gossip, cruelty
imaginary feuds and small resentments.
On the back porch, drinking jet fuel
from a pot of wine among the flowers.

Turn the Page, Turn the Page.

My notebook has remained blank for months.
Friends disappear
off the face of the earth.
If you do not drink the wine, 
then where are the men of yesteryear?

- Katrina A. Brown

Coda

No.	Line	Title	Author&Source
1	Summer brings out the girls in their green dresses	Summer 1967	James K. Baxter, Selected Poems. Copyright © 2010 by The James K. Baxter Trust.
2	Sleep, boredom, gossip, cruelty Imaginary feuds and small resentments	Waste My Life	Hera Lindsay Bird https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/waste-my-life/
3	On the back porch, drinking jet fuel	Jet	Tony Hoagland, Donkey Gospel. Copyright © 1998
4	From a pot of wine among the flowers.	Drinking Alone With the Moon	Li Bai (Bo), Witter Bynner’s translation.
5	Turn the Page, Turn the Page.	The Happy Prince	Janet Frame, The Goose Bath Poems, Random House, 2006
6	My notebook has remained blank for months.	Missed Time	Ha Jin, Poetry, 2006
7	Friends disappear off the face of the earth.	Lines for a New Year	Sam Hunt,  Knucklebones: Poems 1962-2012 (Craig Potton 2012)
8	If you do not drink the wine, Then where are the men of yesteryear?	Facing Wine	Li Bai (Bo) Translation by Paula M. Varsano, Tracking the Banished Immortal: The Poetry of Li Bo and Its Critical Reception,University of Hawaii Press,Honolulu, 2003. p.283.